The Cock Crows
I am filled with astonishment and sorrow after reading the essay Oilarra kukuruka [The Cock Crows] (Erein 2020), which has just been published by Xipri Arbelbide, a Basque priest and friend from Heleta (Lower Navarre). It revolves around the death throes of the Catholic Church in our country, and I am astonished that the author should give it such a provocative, bold title. Xipri, a genius and figure through and through. At the age of 86, he has climbed to the top of the pointed bell tower of Bayonne cathedral to proclaim his kikiriki (cock-a-doodle-doo). That takes energy and courage.
But more than amazement, however, I was overcome with sadness from start to finish when I saw the lively morning song turning into a bitter, confused wail, a sombre, heart-rending distress call. I can understand that. For anyone who has dreamt of a beautiful, triumphant Church, guiding and massive, mother and teacher, supreme possessor of good and sole knower of the truth, for those who have devoted all their strength and abilities –which is no small thing– in favour of that Church both in the Basque Country and in Africa, it must be very painful to see how, as their lives draw to a close, the edifice they wanted to build is cracking and collapsing and that there is no turning back.
Arbelbide admits that he wrote the book with his stomach churning, and his confusion and contortions thus give him away. What is it that pains him so much and makes his stomach churn? It is the decline of the Church, its death throes in this his beloved Basque Country and across all modern societies: empty or closed-down churches, churches without masses or masses without any congregations, the gradual disappearance of the children’s catechism –Oh, the beloved catechism of yesteryear, where the truths of old were always learnt forever in such a simple way!– It’s all gone, it’s disappearing before his astonished, bitter gaze. He cannot deny it, but neither can he understand or accept it, and he is looking for culprits. My dear Xipri, believe me, it’s nobody’s fault. People have abandoned religious beliefs and practices for the same reason they no longer resort to Ember Days to predict the weather or rogation ceremonies to pray for rain: because they study science at school and, above all, at university. And they are no better or worse for that. Their minds and worldviews have changed, and that’s it. It’s as simple as that.
Only Xipri doesn’t see it that way, and his churning stomach is understandable. But he would want us all to suffer as he does (p. 136), and that is no longer right. Jesus of Nazareth never suffered from stomach ache –May God protect us too, from that!– owing to the success or decline of the ecclesiastical institution, for the simple reason that no ecclesiastical institution of any kind ever crossed his mind.
“How is it that the Church succumbs in the midst of a people of gold like the Basque Country,” wonders the priest from Heleta, giving vent to his distress. “Something has gone wrong!” (p. 213). And full of confusion and unease, he asks himself: “Where did we go wrong?” (p. 221). Of course, the “we” is rhetorical, as Xipri displays no awareness of having failed in anything. The crowing of the cock is a long-drawn-out “You sinner”.
Be that as it may, Arbelbide affirms and reaffirms that the Church does not decline except in rich societies like ours, ruined by consumerism: “it decays in a decaying society” (p. 144). Across the world, however, “there it is, stronger than ever” (p. 140), as the numbers seem to show: “worldwide, the number of Catholics is increasing year by year, thirteen million per year.” (p. 153). But he does not paint a complete picture, for example, about the fact that the world population is growing at a much greater rate than that of the Church’s adherents, and that Muslims are increasing more than Christians, with the result that, proportionally, the Church as a whole is declining. Nobody should care, but Xipri is concerned, too concerned.
That is why he strives to make it clear –the more he tries, the less he succeeds– that the problem is not the Church, but dying society. Because society is ill, it rejects religion. Therefore, it is society and culture that must change, not the Church. I don’t know if he really believes that, but hardly anyone else will.
Arbelbide also knows, or thinks he knows, where the pernicious roots of the evil afflicting our society and our culture lie: firstly, communism, secondly, May ’68. The first culprit is communism: “Could it be that we have believed more in politics and Marxism than in Jesus”? (p. 221). When so many Christian communities took Marxist analysis and utopianism seriously, “religion started to become political” (p. 167), says Xipri, as if there could be a religion that was not political in the best or worst sense. How can a disciple of the rebel Jesus think that? Xipri goes further and claims: “It was not the Church that took possession of Marxism, but Marxism that took possession of the Church” (p. 138). Would Marxism have taken possession of Jesus, too? Aren’t his Beatitudes closer to Marx’s utopia than to the dogmas, cults and canonical codes of the Church?
May ’68 is the second major culprit. “Forbidding is forbidden” it proclaimed on the streets of Paris. Everything is free. The Ten Commandments, rigid and outdated, are now summed up in three enjoyable paradises of freedom: sea, sex and sun (p. 212), and in such paradises there is obviously no room for the Church, as if the humble parishioners and the great clerics lived, like angels, without sea, sex or sun. Consumerism, sexism, licentiousness… are the serious diseases of our post-communist and post-Christian world. The Church, on the other hand, is spotless and clean wherever it is found. Hang on a moment: Did not these and many other evils develop precisely at the heart of an age-old Christian society under the sure guidance of the hierarchy? Unlike Pilate, let us not wash our hands now.
“From answer to answer, take away this, take away that, [the Church] ended up empty” (p. 58): this is how Arbelbide sums up his particular historical analysis, completely forgetting the anti-establishment Jesus. That is why he cannot tolerate the fact that in the diocese of Bayonne many Christians and priests have been critical of their bishop Marc Aillet, who is known to be of the far right both in religious and political terms. The first line of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the book begins with the “You sinner” confession: harshly and unjustly, Xipri denounces 60 Basque and Bearnese priests in his diocese for the critical statement (“Mourenx document”) they published in 2017 about their bishop, and even goes as far as to describe them as intolerant. Xipri complains that they have not signed any declaration denouncing the decline of the Church, “which is the fundamental problem” (p. 135). If he were in the bishop’s shoes, he assures us, he would reply to the rebellious priest with the following question: “Where have you brought the Church with that method of yours? Do you want us to follow in your footsteps and fall even lower? (p. 116). In effect, to make the Church fall and empty itself: “That was the dream cherished by some half a century ago” (p. 117). A cruel and unjust stab in the heart of those who have so faithfully dedicated their long lives to the service of Christian communities.
Churning stomachs, finger-pointing and denunciations, all of which reflect Xipri’s obsessive desire to fill the churches and increase the number of priests. “The church without a priest is not healthy,” he once wrote in HEMEN magazine. So the number of priests would reflect the Church’s state of health. We should therefore be pleased that, after decades of decline, the number of priests is once again on the rise under Bishop Aillet. Xipri likes to offer data and comparisons to consolidate his model of an extremely clerical Church. Just two examples: when Aillet was appointed to the bishopric of Bayonne in 2008, there was only one seminarian in the diocese; ten years later (2018), there were 30 (half of them from Africa, it is true, but he does not say that today there are only 4 seminarians left in the whole diocese…); in the last 8 years, 11 have been ordained, compared to 5 in the previous decade. That is, says the priest from Heleta, “the optimistic side”. His best hope lies in increasing the number of priests.
Such a hope grounded in the clerical church was absolutely alien to Jesus of Nazareth, the lay prophet, the revolutionary heretical prophet, who was condemned and killed for standing up to the temple and the clergy. But his breath of life, made one with the breath of every living person that renews all things, lives on beyond all religions, churches and dogmas. The Jesus movement arose out of a transformation to live in permanent transformation and to be transformative, to lose oneself as the seed in the earth and the leaven in the dough, to be all in all by losing oneself for the sake of all. That would merit another crowing of the cock, but I don’t know if the times are right for that.
Aizarna (Basque Country), 14 February, 2021
Translated by Sarah J. Turtle